This How-To is designed to help a person regain control of an email account that has been taken over by someone else.

The intent is to provide a resource we can send friend's who have had their accounts taken over.

And by taken over, we mean had their email account's password discovered by someone else. That person then logs into the email account, changes the password and other details to prevent the true owner to easily regain control of the account.

That nefarious person then uses the email account to attempt to defraud the users friends, or use the email account to send out Spam that will not be blocked by Spam Filters initially since the account was not previously known for sending spam.

More details about how account passwords are obtained are in the column. It should be available online around April 4, 2013.

After this break, we'll discuss how to know if an email account has been hacked, how to get control back, and what to after you have regained control.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Update 4/21/2016 : This solution using Dropbox is being superseded by a new process using Google Photos. See the updated How-to.

In the Family Tech column published March 14, 2013 we discuss how several family members using their camera phones might take pictures of the same event, and how the family might want to consolidate those photos into one place.

For example, a family of four might go on vacation. Both parents, and both teenage children, have smart phones and are taking photos during the entire vacation.

How can we easily get all of these photos into one place so we can share them as a family, then publish them to friends and family and finally back them up for long term safe keeping?

There are any number of methods, but the one outlined in the column has each person creating their own free Dropbox account.

Be sure to test this setup on your system extensively to be sure it works for you and does not put your photos at risk. Be sure alsoto use this method with another backup system to insure the safety of your photos.

The entire process is outlined here step-by-step :

1. Create Dropbox accounts for each member of the family

a. Go to the dropbox.com website
(if you use this link, the size of your box should be 2 gigabytes + 256 megabytes bonus)

b. Create a new account for primary user.
Be sure to record the email address and password you use to create the account.

c. Be sure to log out of Dropbox when you are done creating the account.